Scything

I also like the bond that Murgatroyd and Drew are developing, and the same thing goes for Beretta and Killroy too. I enjoy the relationships between characters because it adds a more fun role playing aspect to the game. Some of our characters used the abilities they just got, or ones that they hadn't used before in this session which I thought was cool as well. On the combat side, I feel like everyone who got a chance to fight did their job, and nobody has taken body yet. Overall, after looking at the overall session, I believe we all played our roles in the expected and unexpected ways which just allows our characters to show their true colors. Had Lots of Fun!

Murgatroyd's UV attack was pretty freaking awesome, and his confident personality was too. I'm glad @Durzan Malakim decided to keep playing him because he provides a fun aspect to the sessions.

I also like the bond that Murgatroyd and Drew are developing, and the same thing goes for Beretta and Killroy too. I enjoy the relationships between characters because it adds a more fun role playing aspect to the game. Some of our characters used the abilities they just got, or ones that they hadn't used before in this session which I thought was cool as well. On the combat side, I feel like everyone who got a chance to fight did their job, and nobody has taken body yet. Overall, after looking at the overall session, I believe we all played our roles in the expected and unexpected ways which just allows our characters to show their true colors. Had Lots of Fun!

I'm using this thread to track the character's progress,  I'll be starting up a separate topic for the adventure itself. As people tell me what they want to spend their XP from last night on, I'll be using this post to keep track of the updated sheets...WilyQ and Scything told me what they wanted on the drive home after the session, so I've updated Joey and Drew.
 
After recalling that lack of  light penalties are a pain, WilyQ wanted Drew to have a flashlight or two, so we bumped up Drew's gear pool a bit to accommodate a cop-style flashlight and also an under-barrel mounted flashlight attachment for his pistol. He also recognized the threat of the pouncey-grabby behavior of the vampires thus far encountered, and thus Drew also recollected some old grappling training he hasn't had to use in a while but "used to be good at" (we added an escape maneuver to his CQB martial art, which he's "always known" but not yet had reason to demonstrate knowing...nothing to see here, just a bush, move along citizens... ). We also swapped a maneuver he's never used (Nelson!) for a very similar maneuver which traded 1D6 NND for Target Falls (Ground & Cuff) which suits Drew's style better as actually played. Future XP will likely see Drew starting to carry zip ties or cuffs, but no room in the budget currently. @WilyQuixote
 
Scything was happy with finding a niche of being "the tech-savvy" member of the group, so he fleshed out Joey's Computer Programming skill. @Scything
 
Murgatroyd  mastered a new trick with his Ring of Arcane Blasts, tuning the beam of energy to take on other properties...such as emulating UV light for the pragmatic purpose of giving vampires sunburns. @Durzan Malakim
 
Baretta has a new fitness trick that allows her to push herself to a heightened response time, but it tires her out (limited SPD). {still under negotiation, so subject to change prior to her next appearance} @Steve

I also like the bond that Murgatroyd and Drew are developing, and the same thing goes for Beretta and Killroy too. I enjoy the relationships between characters because it adds a more fun role playing aspect to the game. Some of our characters used the abilities they just got, or ones that they hadn't used before in this session which I thought was cool as well. On the combat side, I feel like everyone who got a chance to fight did their job, and nobody has taken body yet. Overall, after looking at the overall session, I believe we all played our roles in the expected and unexpected ways which just allows our characters to show their true colors. Had Lots of Fun!

Awesome session, the story is 100% accurate, loved it.
 

Having survived the cloying tendrils and tentacled horrors of the Cthonic dimension of Nikolai and taken the Heartstone by right of conquest, the hunters returned home...and were immediately called upon to intervene in an emergent vampire outbreak at a club on Sunset Strip. Joined by three time survivor of supernatural horrors turned monster hunter Baretta Colt, and a lay brother of the Roman Catholic Church's ancient brotherhood of vampire slayers, Jack of the Ordo Sanguine, Murgatroyd, Killroy, Joey, and Drew careened off into the streets of L.A. to bring the final rest to any bloodsuckers they could run to ground.
 
They didn't know it yet, but our intrepid Hunters were about to make a very powerful new enemy in the form of a shadowy society of elder vamps known as L'Éminence Nocturne...but that's a problem for later. First they must survive this long bloody night...
 
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4  

The Hunters:
        
 
Part 1: 
 
Having slain Nikolai and liberated the Heart Stone from his corrupted possession, our beleaguered hunters prepared to exit the Cthonic realm. Aaron Fitzgibbons opted to remain behind in his home dimension with the noble goal of trying to drive off the Elder Thing encircling his world; he is surely doomed to fail but it is certainly heroic of him to make the attempt. He may not have been thinking clearly after consuming an entire bottle of vodka found in Nikolai's drawing room.
 
The alluring dagger Drew had clutched so possessively upon finding had been destroyed in the act of killing Nikolai...almost as if that exact thing were the purpose for which the dagger had been crafted in the first place. The rest of the arcane bric a brac littering Nikolai's manor was deemed too potentially dangerous to dick around with by Murgatroyd so the Hunters kept their hands to themselves. Joey picked up the Heart Stone itself on the premise he was the most likely to survive any unforeseen magical backlash, but he was unharmed.
 

 
Murgatroyd pulled forth the beacon spell he had been given before departing his own dimension and portentously intoned the incantation scribbled upon it. Everyone tensed up in preparation of something happening...but nothing happened. A tense few moments elapsed. Murgatroyd squinted closely and realized he had mispronounced the last syllable of the last word of the spell. He intoned the spell again, stretching that last syllable properly...and a rift formed in space right there in front of them in dead Nikolai's study. 
 
"Ahem...magic is mostly a matter of repetition...", Murgatroyd said.
 
Exiting the cloying rancid sweetness of Nikolai's dimension and entering the dry arid heat of Las Vegas was an unimaginably uplifting improvement in life circumstances, but each of the four survivors...Drew, Joey, Killroy, and Murgatroyd, were permanently changed in some small way by their time in that doomed plane. 
 
A harried Agent Mathews of Section M awaited them. Though surprised all of them made it, he was alarmed when the attending "specialist" Abernathy observed that the four of them were "different somehow...marked by some alien magic". A tense few minutes followed, and it was starting to look like Section M might decide to quarantine the hunters until they could figure out whatever was going on with them, but Agent Mathews got a text message that superseded small matters such as whether or not to allow potentially Cthonically corrupted individuals to wander around freely.
 
Apparently, a vampire attack had just occurred in public on the Sunset Strip back in LA and he had to get back lickety-split. He took the Hunters back with him via the teleport circle down in the dining room of the  split level house on the fringes of Las Vegas in whose attic the Cthonic rift had been opened in. Emerging back in the classified Section M facility near Riverside, CA which Mathews works out of in an eye blink, the Hunters were told to stand by while Mathews went off to get apprised of the situation.
 
Returning forthwith, Agent Mathews seemed rattled. SAIC Harker, a very senior Section M Agent with decades of experience and a well-earned reputation for being an aggressive loose cannon applied by the Bureau only to those problems where extreme measures are expected to be taken, had arrived at the facility unannounced. Apparently he was running a black op against a vampire infestation in the LA area, without Mathews or anyone else in the field office knowing about it. A pack of newly turned vamps Harker's field agents had been trailing in hopes of being led to a master vampire or at least a bloodsucker higher up the totem pole, had frenzied and killed around 40 people in a night club on the Strip. One of the field agents was dead, and the vamps were in the wind.
 
Harker was demanding resources from Mathews' field office to contain the situation. The hunters were the only team on hand ready to go, so Mathews asked them to step up and go deal with the vamps. After a few moments of thought all four agreed. Mathews ushered them in to meet Harker, but was visibly nervous and practically begged the hunters to "not embarrass" him as "this guy can end my career". He also warned them to not mention Waco. "Seriously, we do not talk about Waco around SAIC Harker. Just...don't, ok? Trust me on this."
 
Harker immediately displayed his "charming" personality in full force, gave them an incredibly terse summary of the situation, sent Drew a coordinate tracker for his "agent in the field" who was in pursuit of "between one and four fleeing vampires", and launched the four of them out into the action by sheer force of angsty will. 
 
Mathews met them in the parking garage on their way out, as they were trying to decide whether to take one of Killroy's or Murgatroyd's rentals or Drew's personally owned vehicle, an unremarkable sedan. None of the cars were well suited to a high speed chase or any sort of tactical situation. Mathews gave Drew the keys to one of the FBI black SUV's, and hurriedly handed out some specialist ammo and gave Joey a shotgun. Which Joey immediately looked down the barrel of, prompting Drew to snatch it away from him and give his young ward a quick primer on shotgun loading, unloading, and general operation. "And don't point it at me, kid".
 
The four then piled in to the SUV, Drew driving, Killroy in the passenger seat, Murgatroyd and Joey in the back. Drew demonstrated his cop driving skills, eventually putting the siren to good use, and hauled ass by every means available to him through  relatively light near-midnight traffic. They were able to make good time towards the blinking blip of Harker's field agent's GPS on Drew's phone. Eventually a HiPol fell in to the SUV's wake and tailed them to their off ramp. As they exited the freeway in front of where it looked like the GPS signal they were following would eventually end up, Drew pulled off the exit ramp and waited.
 
Their HiPol tail pulled up and wanted to know what the hell was going on; Drew flashed credentials and his retiree badge and gave the patrolman the basic situation and asked him to get back on the freeway, loop back around, and close off the exit ramp for thirty minutes. The patrolman was hesitant but called in Drew's FBI consultant license number and was told to comply with Drew's request.
 
A few minutes later, a shitty Civic with three tweaked out punks in it drove by the SUV, followed by other vehicles, and then by a small sports car which seemed to sync up with the GPS signal on Drew's phone. Pulling back onto the road, Drew maneuvered the SUV around to pull up abreast with the sports car...windows were rolled down and our hunters met fellow hunter Baretta Colt.
 
A shouted conversation through the windows established the situation...the car full of tweakers that had driven past first was three of the vamps from the club attack. Drew indicated understanding and then pulled ahead, lights flashing. In Drew's head, what would happen was the erratically driving wigged out bad guys would reasonably and rationally assume the siren spinning black SUV pulling up on them was just a cop trying to pass them to go somewhere else, which would allow Drew to get in front of them and bar their path.
 
What actually happened was the vampire doing the driving panicked, recklessly tried to veer off the road, lost control of the vehicle, and ended up flipping the getaway car in a rolling crash ended by slamming  into a civilian car. A pileup ensued. 
 
Drew's tactical driving skills proved useful again as he was able to bring his large vehicle to a sliding halt, somehow avoiding collision and also luckily ending with the SUV's headlights pointed directly at the upside down getaway vehicle of the three vampires Baretta had been pursuing. There was a brief pause as those involved took stock of the situation. Then all hell broke loose.

Drew got on the SUV's PA system and ordered all civilians in the area to depart immediately due to extreme danger, lethal force authorized, etc...and using cop lingo, confident authority, plus the pure decibels of the PA system (and maybe a little luck as well)...he convinced most people to do just that. A couple of die hard cell phone users further away from the action were unswayed however, and began filming the incident. There were also doubtlessly security cameras in the nearby shops, and less visible looky-loos with recording devices. Drew was already worrying at that problem in the back of his mind and coming up with a containment plan.
 
Stopping a bit further down the road, Baretta Colt exited her vehicle, slapped leather to get the cold steel of her custom 1911's into her hands, and put a round through the back window of the upside down Civic to blow a chunk out of the trapezius of one of the vampires, who howled with anger and a predatory promise of vengeance.
 
On the other side of the Civic, Killroy wasted no time stabilizing his sniper rifle on the passenger door's window frame and taking a booming shot to completely blow the shoulder off one of the other vamps with one round from his small supply of consecrated bullets.
 
Murgatroyd rolled down his window and extended a knobbly fist, pointing his fancy signet ring at the now one-armed vampire Killroy had shot, and emitted an invisible-to-the-human-eye burst of arcane energy arranged in a mystical latticework meant to emulate ultraviolet light. The vampire's flesh blistered and peeled away immediately, and the young vamp emitted a horrifying shriek as he caught fire and died.
 
The vampire shot in the trapezius by Colt sprang from the vehicle and rushed at her, one arm limp but the other poised to strike. She snapped off a high shot to stop the creature, but missed! Killroy's big gun boomed again and the vampire's torso literally exploded, burst by the consecrated large caliber round. Luckily the round was consumed by the release of mystical energy and did not continue on to strike Baretta who was directly in the line of fire.
 
Joey jumped out and ran towards the upside down Civic, eager to get to shoot his new shotgun, but the third vampire...the driver...burst free from his seat belt and knocked the driver's side car door clear off its hinges and thirty feet or more away with one hard burst of strength. Then he launched himself catapult-like from the vehicle straight at Joey in a mighty leap, landing just short.
 

 
Drew had opted to depart the SUV and braced across the hood of the vehicle; he snapped off a shot at Joey's attacker deliberately targeting the knee with the intent of taking the vamp alive for interrogation. Drew took the shot, and hit the back of the vampire's knee with perfect accuracy as planned. Unfortunately, the 10mm round caught a bone, ricocheted around quite a bit, spalling horrifically, and ultimately blew the leg clean off just above the knee. The vampire's blood gushed out in a massive spurt, coating Joey, and the vamp fell to the ground nearly drained of the mystically infused blood that allowed his undead body to persist...and thus nearly expired.
 
Baretta yelled out, exasperatedly, "don't kill that one! we need to question him!" and Killroy relayed that info, but not knowing what to do Joey hesitated. Finally he put down his shotgun (still unfired) and clamped on to the vamp's thigh, squeezing the truncated leg with superhuman strength as a sort of half-assed tourniquet.  

Baretta and Killroy rushed over to help Joey, and Baretta pulled a first aid kit from her backpack. Killroy provided his belt, and working together they managed to get a real tourniquet in place. Joey carried the nearly-dead-for-real vamp to the back of the SUV and climbed into the back with him while the rest of the group tried to think of a way to restrain the vampire should he recover. Various increasingly unlikely scenarios were explored, but finally accepting that there wasn't much they could to do restrain someone who could rabbit punch a car door completely off its hinges and send it flying, Drew ordered Joey to just sit on the vamp and use his own superhuman strength to restrain the perp.
 
Killroy and Baretta ran down a couple of cell phone video tapers to confiscate their phones as evidence. Drew pulled ID's and cell phones from the victims, called in their drivers licenses, found a phone number for the vampire named Dai on one of the dead vamps phone, and called that in for directory lookup.
 
In the back of the SUV, silently the vamps regeneration had kicked in and healed him enough to put up some fight. Throwing Joey off of himself with tremendous strength, the vamp tried to escape before realizing he was missing a leg. Joey bounced off the inside of the SUV but was unharmed and kicked off the interior wall to land a devastating punch on the vamps sternum in an attempt to regain control and prevent escape. Unfortunately, the badly injured vamp could not sustain that kind of force...the tourniquet was burst from the pressure as the vamp's chest caved in. Bleh...dead for real this time.
 
Murgatroyd had bailed from the backseat of the truck what with all the brouhaha going on which got Drew's attention and he returned to the truck...seeing the situation he just sighed and handed off the cell phones he had pilfered to Joey to data dump and sift through. Meanwhile using the cell phone number Drew had called in to get billing records, analysts texted Drew an address for the last known residence of Dai, and he shared that info with the team.
 
Baretta and Killroy wanted to immediately go check out the location, while Drew insisted the team first lock down security footage and secure the scene.  Tensions between Drew and Baretta were immediate and they were unable to agree. Thus the team split, with Baretta and Killroy driving off to Van Nuys while Drew managed the scene by calling things in and putting arriving law enforcement to work,  Murgatroyd paged through his field spell book for a detection spell and Joey wrote a grepping script to sift through the data he gained from the dead vamps' phones looking for keywords, patterns, and hopefully some kind of a timeline of changes in behavior as gleaned from texting and calls.
 

Murgatroyd worked out the details of a functional detect spell for Dai using a profile photo on one of the dead vamps phones, and with the crime scene under control, Drew was comfortable leaving the rest of the cleanup to others. Saddling back up in the loaner black SUV, the trio headed towards Van Nuys guided by Murgatroyd's spell.
 
Meanwhile, actually already in Van Nuys, Killroy and Baretta found Dai's residential address easily, half of a duplex in a lower rent neighborhood. The side of the duplex they were interested in was possibly vacant, though a dim light could be seen behind the front window's curtain. Uncertain if Dai had possibly turned neighbors, the duo proceeded cautiously. Finally, after some cell phone communication back and forth with SAIC Harker and Drew & team, they decided that the place was probably deserted and moved in via breaking a corner of the front window and opening it for ingress.
 
They found a shitty, poorly furnished and not very tidy bachelor apartment, abandoned. Upstairs in the single bedroom on a beside table Baretta found a kinko's copies cardboard box about half full of band flyers for "Maximum Carnage", apparently the name of Dai's wannabe metal band. The other three vamps that were killed by the team earlier appeared to be the rest of the band. According to the flyer, the band was celebrating being picked up by Slip It To Me records with a "one night only" appearance at the Lush...the club where the vamp attack had occurred. On speaker phone with the rest of the team, Baretta told them the url for the band's website, which Joey looked up...and from there dug into Slip It To Me records, and its parent company Glitterglam Industries. Various clues about the adventure were thereby revealed. 
 
Meanwhile, Drew's expert driving was leading them inexorably to an abandoned music studio in a rundown industrial area of Van Nuys...Music Town Studios...Joey looked it up and discovered that the abandoned building was still listed as being owned by one Samuel Phillip Wilson...owner of Slip It To Me Records and Chief Operating Officer of Glitterglam Industries...hrm...The group surmised that Samuel Wilson is likely the vampire called "Slip" who is known to have been hanging around LA for nearly four decades but somehow always avoids capture or destruction. He's as slippery as his namesake.
 
Between that and Murgatroyd's spell clearly indicating that Dai could be found inside the studio, the group was sure they were in the right place. Killroy and Baretta rejoined them soon. While waiting, Joey's program finished processing, and he reviewed the findings. A clear pattern emerged of normal dumb ass wannabe rock star behavior between the three vamps and their social network, and then several days ago a marked change in who they were communicating with (or more to the point, weren't) and what they were talking about...it was obvious when they had been turned. The main thrust of conversation that emerged was that "Slip" wanted them to do something violent to someone called "Vincent", and back and forth conversation about whether they actually would. From the tone of the conversation, they were working up their courage.
 
Joey relayed all of that to Drew, and Drew called it in to Mathews and asked for analyst support. 
 

Reunited, the five Hunters reconvened their partnership. Drew cast an experienced eye around the area and pointed out a snipers blind for Killroy to support a plan of luring Dai out of the building into the front courtyard so that Killroy could take the shot while the rest of the Hunters took up supporting positions. Drew wanted the easy on the eyes Baretta to play bait, going into the building, getting Dai's attention, and then running out to kite the vamp into the open. 
 
Baretta was having none of that idea and suggested they send the supposedly invulnerable kid, Joey, in instead. Drew took exception that she'd send a kid in, and the two resumed their already contentious relationship. Not wanting to see the group fracture again, Joey quickly volunteered to be the bait and the argument was grudgingly settled...aided by a nearly silent electric luxury sedan pulling up behind the building on the other side of the studio. Joey and Drew noticed it, but the rest of the group had their back turned and did not. Joey pointed it out and the team sprang into action mode.
 
Joey and Drew made for a window on the front of the building while Murgatroyd took up a position nearby at a corner, and Baretta tactically jogged towards the other corner where the vehicle Joey and Drew had spotted allegedly was. Killroy snapped in to support Baretta.
 
Murgatroyd got Drew's attention and conveyed via pantomime that his detection spell indicated Dai was on the other side of a boarded up window by the also boarded up front door. Drew turned and fired without hesitation, the bullet luckily finding a gap between the boards, shattering some remaining glass, and could then be heard to ricochet off of something indoors, followed by an improbable "OW! WHAT THE $#*%!" from inside.
 
Nearly simultaneously Joey plunged through the window he had been aiming at, shattering the board over it. Killroy refocused his attention in that direction. Drew noted some of the shards of wood as potentially useful makeshift stakes.
 
Around back, Baretta could see that there was indeed a fancy luxury vehicle parked behind the building and that one of the board sections had been pulled down off a open window...presumably the driver of the vehicle had gone inside. She pulled out her cell phone and snapped a picture of the license plate and sent it to SAIC Harker. 
 
Inside the studio Joey could hear both Dai in the front lobby, and someone else on the other side of a wall towards the back of the building. Running towards the front lobby, he came out near Dai and leveled his shotgun. Finally! He'd get to shoot it!

 
Dai, seeing some kid wearing a "I {heart} LA" t-shirt (which Drew had bought him earlier at the first crime scene to replace Joey's blood-soaked original shirt) and pointing a shotgun at him, stared menacingly and said "Like...just...GO AWAY, MAN!" with the full force of vampiric influence. However, though not entirely unaffected, Joey proved to be resilient to this type of control and said, "Uh, no...", and prepared to shoot. Dai, startled that his most reliable trick hadn't worked, activated vampire speed and blurred out the window Drew had shot him through, bursting boards, took a swipe at Drew forcing him to dive for cover, and finally...conveniently...ended his movement smack in the middle of the courtyard and Killroy's sights. Drew and his damn improbable plans that somehow work out way more often than they should at play again, perhaps? 
 
Killroy didn't hesitate to ease his rifle's trigger back, and a third round from of his dwindling supply of consecrated bullets exploded Dai's head in a geyser of blood and flung the corpse several meters to thud against the side of the building. "Dammit, we needed him alive!", Drew muttered. 
 
With Dai gone, Joey ran further into the building to find the other person he had heard and rounded the corner, shotgun at the ready, on a frightening looking and much more menacing vampire...who stared Joey in the eyes...and that's the last thing Joey remembered, locked in some kind of a mental mesmerism. Unknown to him, the vamp then pounced upon Joey and started to try to feed, but the vamp was rather dismayed to discover that his fangs could not penetrate Joey's skin...like, at all.
 

 
The vamp, who was none other than Slip, was just starting to realize that he might be in a bad situation when Baretta leaned in through the back window and saw some vampire trying to feed  on a seemingly helpless Joey. She aimed carefully before unmercifully blowing the back of Slip's head off with one of her own limited supply of blessed bullets. Four decades of dodging some of the best Hunters in the business as well as other enemies came to a close for Slip, shot from behind like Jesse James. 
 
With no further threats remaining, the team regrouped and called it in. SAIC Harker was "not happy" that they had managed to kill all the known vamps and thus known sources of information. He ordered them to sit on the bodies and the car and he would helo lift to their location.
 
Thus endeth the session....
 
Part 2 >>

Had a lot of fun last night can't wait till next session

A couple of past players took the time to write up Dossiers for their characters...you might have the start of one there...
 
http://www.killershrike.com/HereThereBeMonsters/Campaigns/WeTooUntoDarkness/JonBregg/Dossier.aspx
 
http://www.killershrike.com/HereThereBeMonsters/Campaigns/WeTooUntoDarkness/MilesHendricks/Dossier.aspx
 

We had a full house for this session; Steve couldn't make it to play due to a commitment, but King Red showed up and took over piloting Killroy for the session. Steve showed up later in the evening and observed / helped track combat encounters. Thuddgunn also showed up after an absence from the group, and took on playing significant NPC Aaron Fitzgibbons. WilyQuixote continued to play lucky ex-SWAT Lieutenant Drew Altman, Durzan continued to play the bookish wizard Murgatroyd, and Scything continued to play Joey Manegarm...of the Get of Fenrir.
 

 
We had a jam packed session and finished on time. Each of the Hunters got to do their thing and had at least one moment of glory or impact upon the emerging story. Particularly memorable, the final encounter saw Drew use up nearly all of his remaining luck for the session on one mad gambit that paid off in spades. 
 
It remains to be seen what lies ahead for our intrepid Hunters...

Moments after KIllroy killed the monstrous Q'gthik lurking in the dead still waters of the black lake beneath the Stone Door and then dragged his teammates out of the drink and gotten them breathing again, the eerie green mist occluding the sky split, dark clouds opened up, and one of the enormous tentacles encircling the world distended downward through the vast distance and into the lake, the waters retracting from the visible aura of corruption surrounding it.
 
Merely looking upon the inconceivably vast rubbery ichor-oozing appendage of an actual no-fooling Elder Thing ate at the sanity of the Hunters, tendrils of alien whispers clawing at the corners of their minds. With the waters pushed aside, the grotesquely deformed head of the kraken-like Q'gthik was clearly visible at the bottom of the lake, one plate-sized eye exploded and a 50 caliber hole in the center of it's "face". The tip of the sky tentacle touched the corpse's head, green energy flowing from it...the creature's wounds began to heal and its remaining eye began to open...
 
The ambient sense of oppression and mental pressure that had assaulted the Hunters since entering this tainted dimension intensified, and they each knew without words that they had become...noticed...and marked. Joey's heightened senses also informed him that the giant space tentacle's alarming behavior had not gone unnoticed by the creatures inhabiting the region...he could hear the kips and keenings of otherworldly critters upon the wind...it would only be a matter of moments before things began to descend upon their position.
 
The Hunters wisely decided to high tail it out of there...advancing along the trail higher up the mountain, Joey running ahead, Drew protecting Murgatroyd, and Killroy bringing up the rear.  Murgatroyd decided to help himself by helping his allies, and risked some of his own sanity to cast a spell on each of their firearms to temporarily increase the effectiveness of bullets fired from them. This had the side effect of causing the weapons to glow, both visibly and supernaturally, but given the circumstances and the locality that consideration was correctly deemed to be irrelevant. 
 
Pressing up the trail well in advance of his allies, Joey smelled a wave of putrid air blown down the trail from further up the mountain...a pack of something was surely coming down the trail. He ran back down and notified his allies. With few options on the narrow incline, Killroy quickly assembled a makeshift snipers blind a bit down the trail using branches and dead leaves, and Drew luckily somehow managed to conceal his bulk surprisingly well behind a dead tree, but Murgatroyd's attempt at self concealment was laughable, and Joey may as well have not bothered. 
 
After a few minutes of tense stillness with no monsters putting in an appearance, Drew finally lost patience and assumed the kid was wrong. Moving out of position he was in the process of ordering the group to resume their journey when a long worm like creature with tentacles and blade-like protrusions burst from the rocky earth beneath Drew's feet, twisting around his legs and squeezing hard. 
 
Murgatroyd ran forward to cast his Hermetic protective circle in the middle of the trail to offer some magical protection to his allies, and only thanks to a timely lucky stumble that propelled the spindly wizard forward faster than expected he narrowly avoided being snatched up by another of the burrowing worm things exploding from the ground at his feet. Joey sprang into the fight and similarly only narrowly avoided being snatched from below. A pitched battle unfolded, Killroy's big rifle doing some talking, and Drew taking carefully aimed headshots at close range with his glowing pistol, while Joey punched and kicked with his superhuman strength. The creatures repeatedly attempted to pull the Hunters beneath the surface, burrowing away and returning only when a Hunter moved along the ground, as if they could sense the tremors of their steps. Murgatroyd recognized the creatures as things called Bryr'thept in the briefing they had read before taking the mission and tried to caution his teammates against walking, but it was easier said than done.
 
Methodically the Hunters carefully wore the enemy down, the soil of the trail in that area becoming hopelessly churned into an ichorous mess in the process. But with a final ringing echo of a perfect shot, Killroy exploded the "head" area of what appeared to be the last of the vicious worm like creatures. It seemed as if the Hunters had won another victory. But seconds later another handful of the things burst from the ground, screeching and apparently very angry. The Hunters prepared for a deadly struggle, but a large red skinned loin-cloth wearing humanoid ran down the trail and joined the battle...apparently on their side, ripping and punching the worm like creatures with great force and effectiveness. With their newfound ally's help, the second wave of burrowers was dispatched more easily than the first. 
 
The Hunters were initially wary of their new ally, put off by his monstrous appearance, but he politely introduced himself as Aaron Fitzgibbons, a native of this realm and a bitter enemy of Nikolai...the sorcerer to blame for this dimensions fall to Cthonic entities. In need of allies to press his own vengeance quest to make Nikolai pay for his crimes, Aaron offered to help the Hunters. After a short pow wow, the Hunters agreed, and the larger by one group pressed on up the winding incline. They next came to a broken gatehouse, the site of both a long ago battle and a more recent one in which massive amounts of magic were discharged to take down Cthonic creatures. Remains littered the area. Murgatroyd correlated this location to a major encounter described in the Hendricks report.
 
Killroy used his rope launcher to winch himself and Joey up onto a 30m tall rock outcrop, hoping to get a clear line of sight on Nikolai's manor house. Arriving at the top, the footing was poor, and in the very act of warning young Joey to watch his footing and not fall off, Killroy slipped and fell off. Luckily Joey was able to latch on to Killroy's ammo harness and pull him back to safety using supernatural strength. Killroy grunted his thanks, and wasted no time scoping in. He could just see the corner of the manor house's roof over another rise, maybe three quarters of a mile further up the mountain. However down and to the right, in a sort of rising valley between outcroppings, he could make out what seemed to be a battle between two tribes of tentacle-faced Krythoths. 
 
Joey and Killroy slid down the rope to rejoin the other Hunters, and they proceeded further up the trail, but within a few yards rounded a bend and found a continuation of old battle remains surrounding a destroyed summoning stone. Investigating the refuse of the conflict, Drew noticed something in a pile of remains...reaching his hand in almost without thought, his grip wrapped itself around the hilt of an old dull-bladed dagger. Murgatroyd and Joey both recognized the item as being powerfully dangerous magic; Murgatroyd's discerning eye revealed that it had been made to kill Cthonic things by turning their own nature against them. Aaron confirmed that, recognizing it as a weapon made long ago by an old ally of his, the adventuring magicker Bainbriar Thost. Drew was "disinclined" to put the weapon down or hand it over to others. Sensing a potential problem yet was not in a position to do anything about it currently, Murgatroyd held his tongue but silently resolved to keep an eye on the situation.
 
Joey and Aaron ran on up the trail to resume scouting the path, leaving the slower Hunters behind. Eventually they emerged into the rising valley Killroy had scoped, and were able to make out that the struggle between the two tribes of  Krythoths continued about a hundred meters off the trail, though many of the monsters had killed each other. Joey proceeded to attempt to sneak past, but Aaron became enraged and ran off to fight the Krythoths. Unsure what to do, Joey decided his duty was to help his new ally fight so he ran after him. The two proceeded to tear into the monsters. 
 
In the meantime, the other Hunters reached the part of the trail where their scouts had deviated from the mission, and failing to perceive what had occurred, pressed on up the trail secure in the idea that their allies had scouted the path. Thus they were somewhat surprised to emerge into a clearing about the same time a lumbering eight foot tall chitinous nightmare of a creature burst from the other side of the tree line and charged them. Killroy snapped off a shot, but the powerful sniper round ricocheted off the creature's thick bug like armor.  Murgatroyd managed to retain control of his bowels and cast a protective circle, Drew strafed right for a better angle, snapped in, and put a lucky bullet into the monster's brainpan...which amazingly knocked the thing down and staggered it! Killroy chambered one of his nine remaining rounds of sanctified bullets, focused on being one with the target, and finished it off with a shot between the legs into the vitals. For reasons he couldn't quite explain, Drew ran forward with his newly recovered dagger, still clutched in his grip, and chopped the thing's head off for good measure. The dagger slid through the thick chitinous armor like a katana through rice paper.
 
Joey and Aaron caught up with the other Hunters shortly thereafter, and when pressed by Drew on why he had gone off mission, Joey tried to fend him off with a bs story very much like the teenager he is. Drew registered his disappointment in Joey. Aaron was unconcerned and bemused by what the fuss was about. Finally the group pressed on, and soon made it to Nikolai's manor house. Murgatroyd was insistent that the Hunters needed to find a bag of bones talked about in detail in the debriefing of Miles Hendricks, which Miles claimed were necessary to weaken Nikolai enough to defeat him. Drew was trying to organize some kind of sneaky plan to approach the  manor while looking for the bones without getting spotted, but while the planning was going on Aaron just walked up and through the wrought iron gate around the house's front entrance, the rusty iron making a horrible screeching noise upon being opened. He looked over and saw an old leather satchel full of bones off to the side of the path inside the enclosed area, stepped over, and pilfered the skull of Nikolai's dead wife out of it. He called out that he'd found the bones, loudly.
 
Three stories up in his study, hearing the racket of all this, Nikolai peered out through lace curtained windows to see what kind of damn kids were on his lawn...and caught a sanctified bullet between the eyes from Killroy, who had quietly set up a snipers roost while his allies dithered. The bullet shattered the window but then exploded into fragments, doing absolutely nothing to Nikolai whatsoever...not even pushing him back. Nikolai squinted to make Killroy out down below and 'tsk tsk'd' him, waving a finger at him as if at a naughty boy. The curtains twitched closed and presumably Nikolai was heading down the stairs. 
 
Aaron went up onto the stoop and used the large metal doorknocker to knock upon the door. Drew, Joey, and against his better judgement Murgatroyd advanced up to the fence line. Joey went around and retrieved the bag of bones, handing it over the railing to Drew, who holstered his pistol to carry it...unable to bring himself to let go of the dagger. Nikolai finally made it to the door, and after having a shouted conversation through the door, opened it to converse with Aaron, inviting him and the Hunters in for vodka and conversation. Aaron was having none of it, became enraged mid sentence, kicked the door all the way open, and smashed Nikolai with his dead wife's skull. The skull shattered and Nikolai was knocked down, but he did not seem to be harmed by the blow. 
 
Fortunately long years of breaching doors had trained Drew well for exactly this situation...without hesitation he ran up the stoop and past Aaron, diving through the door and burying the magical dagger directly into Nikolai's forehead, satchel of Nikolai's dead wife's bones still in his other hand...breaking the protective magics preventing Nikolai from dying and finally killing the traitorous sorcerer once and for all in a display of unbelievable luck.
 
With his mortal enemy of many centuries finally dead, Aaron recovered his wits, said "good showing, old chap" to Drew, then pushed on into the manor house, "...I seem to recall the blighter said something about having vodka in here..."

I'm looking forward to part 2! 

This is my character...here's his current version, with some hard won XP applied...
 
http://www.killershrike.com/HereThereBeMonsters/Characters/GMsVault/DaysOfTomorrowsPassed/OneShotAtEase/Joey Manegarm.HTML
 

The Hunters:
   
 
The Story:
 
We're three sessions in to what I hope will prove to be a recurring episodic campaign (a collection of one to three session adventures, in between other campaigns in different settings run by revolving GM's). 
 
In sessions 1 and 2, the salty ex-SWAT Lt. turned Monster Hunter Drew Altman and the wet-behind-the-ears teenager Joey Manegarm who's adolescent inexperience is belied by his supernatural nature as a descendant of the Get of Fenrir (which also makes him Loki-spawn, but whose counting?), unexpectedly met and had to rise to the challenge when a swarm of Revenants overran the coffee shop in idyllic Tierrasola where they both happened to be partaking of caffeinated beverages. Combining forces to discover and defeat a powerful Black Wizard, the unlikely duo proved to be an effective team.
 
In session 3, Drew and Joey were invited by Section M along with lone gunman and surly vengeance seeker James Killroy, as well as the aloof ritualist Wizard known as Murgatroyd, to be sent through a tear in the dimensional fabric separating their own reality from a darker one corrupted by Cthonic forces, apparently caused by the misadventures of the infamous Mysterian and Arcanist Miles Hendricks.
 
Something on the other side is trying to come through, prevented only by the actions of a beleaguered and tiring team of specialist arcanists, and Section M wants the Hunters to go thru the rift to put a stop to it. An artifact described by Miles from his time on the other side, the Heartstone, is believed to be the key to the endeavor, and the Hunters' mission is simple...capture or destroy it and then if possible survive long enough to be extracted. 
 
The danger is immense. But so is the bounty...$1,000,000 for each surviving Hunter upon success...a nearly unheard of amount for a single contract.